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The annual Street Food Festival enlivens blocks of the Mission every year with many of our great food trucks, booths manned by the kitchen staff of our favorite SF restaurants, and a few visiting guests -- which at this year's fest on August 18 included my favorite Portland food cart Eurotrash, and the adorable Linda Green of Ms Linda's Catering from New Orleans. Read more »

A wave of nostalgia rolled fierce last night through the Regency Ballroom. It was everywhere – on stage with the Desaparecidos, a reformed group of five accomplished Omaha musicians, who seemed to lean on one another for comfort during noisy breakdowns, bending backward and lurching forward while playing all the tracks off their one album together, Read Music, Speak Spanish (Saddle Creek Records, 2002). It was in the rapturous, screaming crowd, mosh-pitting past its prime, and pumping skinny fists to the beat. And up on the balcony, it rose on my arms in the form of an endless series of goose pimples. Nostalgia sans irony. Read more »

With a lineup jam packed with hip-hop artists from all across the genre’s increasingly diverse spectrum, Rock the Bells last weekend at Shoreline Amphitheater came and left Mountain View in a two-day flurry of generational hops.

The logistics: 35 acts from over two decades of hip-hop covering two stages in the span of a weekend. With just about any song, regardless of era, available via the web, this type of generational shuffling in music is becoming a normalized impulse. Read more »

Black lace, kimonos, and colorful wigs ruled the day this weekend in Japantown at the J-Pop Summit Festival Aug. 25-26. Also popular this year, for those of you trend-spotting, were sweetly wobbling attenae, which announced the presence of the head attached as they weaved through the booths, stopping here and there to check out the Vocaloid dance contest, an Evangelion fan's robotic get-up, or the Sunday performance by 18-year singer Kylee. Although there was music, food, and things to buy, it was really all about the clothes. Read more »

The push and pull of relationships is a great basis for a dance piece. Not only are relationships intimate, beautiful, and at times frustrating, but they also create magnetic moments, and sometimes pain. This weekend, two dance companies, Detour Dance and the Caitlin Elliott Dance Collective, have collaborated (see? Relationships) to present Along the Way, a production that includes all the basics: love, lust, plain old allure. Read more »

Bromance was in the air Sunday night as Braid took the stage at Slim’s. The on-again, off-again band recently reunited after a seven-year hiatus just in time to play its 600th show, and the members seemed genuinely grateful for the opportunity. On the final stop of their West Coast tour, these Illinois post-hardcore trailblazers thanked their fans by playing through their beloved and influential 1998 album Frame & Canvas in its entirety. Read more »

It wasn't too long ago that shopping locally meant hitting up your neighborhood Safeway. But seemingly overnight (in retrospect), farmers markets sprung up like healthy tomato plants. A weekend doesn't go by during which I don't see someone toting their re-usable canvas bag down the street to fill up with fresh produce from local growers.Read more »

Reunited after having first toured together 30 years ago, KISS and Mötley Crüe having joined forces once again unleashing their mighty sound last night at the Sleep Train Pavillion.

If Mötley Crüe was indeed intended to be the opening act it was hard to tell; its set length was just two songs longer than KISS and witnessed by a much more frenzied audience being pushed to the limit thanks to the druid-style carnival theme the band has been working with for ages now.

Recovered yet? We're almost there. It was a frenzied, foggy, dusty and memorable weekend at Outside Lands in Golden Gate Park. There were sonic high points that brought us to tears, and bathroom lines that did the same. Here are our favorite moments, a photo slideshow of awesome performances -- and the niggling things that got under our skin. Read more »

At some point during the massive “Sweet Caroline” sing-a-long deep into Neil Diamond’s concert at HP Pavilion, a rowdy female fan vaulted into my aisle, loudly proclaimed her love to Neil, skulked away from some security guards, and then just all-out bolted for the stage.

She made it as far as the fourth row before a scrum of ushers in royal blue jackets intercepted her in mid-sprint. At that point, Neil was really whipping the place into a tidy frenzy. In fact, by the time he hit his stride on “Cracklin’ Rosie” a couple songs later (“Play it now/Play it now my baby”), it seemed like the audience of dolled-up cougars and enthralled seniors might just erupt into a full-on mosh pit. Read more »